Summer is coming to a close, vacations are taking place and spare time is available. It’s the perfect time to catch up on your reading and focus your mind and body on closing out the year on top of your game!

And don’t just stop there, prepare for amazing things in 2015!

The key to reading and absorbing these books is “ACTION”

Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

Success through a Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill

The Success System that Never Fails by W. Clement Stone

The One Thing by Gary Keller

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

How to Win Friends and influence People by Dale Carnegie

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis

Bonus: must listen audio (for $2.95, how can you not):
Napoleon Hill in His Own Voice: Rare Recordings of His Lectures

The greatest secret of success is: there is no secret!
Sorry to disappoint after that lead-in title but it’s the truth.

With that said, a positive mental attitude is the one simple trait that could be considered a secret that is shared among the world’s most successful people. After that, success is disguised as something called hard work.

“Anything in life worth having is worth working for!” – Andrew Carnegie

The problem with most people is that they are well on their way to success when an obstacle decides to block their path. Most people will attempt to jump this hurdle or blast through the challenging brick wall but when rejected, they decide to turn around, give up and walk away because the task is just too challenging. Most people don’t have the burning desire and persistence to realize their dreams because they feel it’s easier to just be average and carry on like 98-99% of the rest of the world.

“Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do”. – Napoleon Hill

I recently posted the above quote to a friend on facebook and asked him: “So what will you do?” He was faced with some unfortunate failure in life and was feeling down but it appears that he’s getting up and will treat the failure as a temporary defeat. That’s admirable because everyone fails in life, a countless number of times, but it’s the people that continue to move forward with a definiteness of purpose that will achieve their dreams.

The following poem illustrates that no more effort is required to aim high in life than is required to accept misery and poverty. It takes less work to succeed than to fail so do what you are afraid to do:

My Wage by Jessie B. Rittenhouse:

I bargained with life for a penny
And life would pay no more
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store

For life is just an employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.

A definite purpose backed by a burning desire is the first step towards achieving success. However, a definite PLAN, carried out in CONTINUOUS ACTION is required in order to get your dreams going. Thoughts and ideas are great but if they are NOT acted upon, they die inside your mind. Action is required to realize your dreams and NO one becomes successful without action (a lot of new age self-help guru’s and books focus on thoughts and desires but action is the key).

Close your mind to all negative and discouraging influences, especially negative family and friends. Lastly, your dreams will be accelerated by forming an alliance with one or more persons who will encourage you to follow through with your plan and purpose. Napoleon Hill called this The Master Mind which he defined as: “Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose”.

I said that a positive mental attitude could be considered a possible secret to success, well, action would be the other because decisions without action are worthless!

I am architect, now working as a Owner’s Representative, writing a successful blog about the stock market, tweeting to thousands of followers, getting published in multiple books, have been interviewed on the radio and speaking at Expos in front of large audiences. Who would have ever thought? What’s next? Book writer, real estate developer, web entrepreneur, educator, motivational speaker…? Who knows but I can tell you one thing, if I think it, I’ll do it because I dream every day and I do what I am afraid to do and my life is consistently more successful.

“Some dream and never do. Others do and never dream. But then there are those very few who dream, and do what they dream”

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